In the context of a wireless telecommunication network, wireless subscribers are accustomed to having the capability of editing their outgoing dialed telephone numbers, e.g., when they are incorrectly keyed-in or as otherwise desired. This feature is embedded within the mobile handset or wireless telephone insomuch as the subscriber must push the “send” key or another designated button after the desired telephone number is entered. As processing of the dialed telephone number is not started until after the “send” key is pushed, a wireless subscriber typically has the convenience of editing the dialed telephone number at any time prior to pushing the “send” key.
In the context of a wireline or landline telecommunications network, the aforementioned convenience has heretofore not been supported by the network and/or provided to landline subscribers.
Unlike in the foregoing wireless example, when a telephone number is dialed from a landline device (e.g., a telephone or other customer premise equipment (CPE) or some end user device) served by a telecommunications switch (e.g., a class 5 switch such as the 5ESS or the like), typically processing of the dialed telephone number by the switch proceeds as each digit is dialed or entered. That is to say, typically the call processing state of the switch is updated after each digit or some number of digits in the telephone number are entered and received. The start of processing the dialed telephone is usually not delayed until all the dialed digits have been received by the switch. For example, assuming the first digit dialed and received by the switch is a “1”, then the call processing state of the switch is updated to reflect a long distance call even if the remainder of the digits have not yet been dial and/or received by the switch. The switch recognizes that the telephone number being dialed will take the switch to or through a particular call processing state regardless of what the remaining digits are, and therefore, it updates its call processing state accordingly even if the remaining digits of the telephone number have not yet been received. In this way, the time it takes to process a dialed telephone number can be minimized or reduced in comparison to waiting for all the dialed digits to be received before starting to process the dialed telephone number.
However, processing of dialed telephone numbers in the manner of the foregoing landline example, does not support editing of the dialed telephone numbers in the same way as the foregoing wireless example. Accordingly, it would be advantageous for landline subscribers to have the same benefits and convenience wireless subscribers enjoy to edit outgoing dialed telephone numbers. This advantageous would be particularly appreciated when nearing the end of dialing a long telephone number (e.g., a 14-digit international number), and a wrong or incorrect digit is erroneously or accidentally entered. In such an instance, it would be beneficial to merely edit the incorrectly entered digit rather than hanging-up and placing the call again, i.e., having to redial the telephone number over from the beginning.
Another situation arises when navigating through a voice menu front-end interface employed by many businesses. Often there is no way to recover from a menu option selection error. In those cases where recovery is possible, a user often has to wait and listen to numerous options to identify the number associated with a back-up, return to previous or main menu, or a “repeat choices” option. This inconvenience arises because many of these system have adopted their own peculiar way of handling this type of user interaction scenario. That is to say, there is generally no universal model for editing misdialed digits.
Accordingly, a new and improved enhanced dialing service and/or feature is disclosed that overcomes the above-referenced problems and others.